Until recently, time recorders have been mechanical devices requiring regular maintenance to ensure reliable operation and they are very limited in the facilities they can offer in addition to the simple recording of in/out times. Recently, electronic time recorders have become available, see for example U.S. Pat. No. 4,270,043 (Kronos) that employs an optically readable card and U.S. Pat. No. 4,017,857 (Evans et al) that suggests a time accounting system based on cards bearing a magnetic stripe. Currently there are two fundamentally different types of equipment used for employee time recording. Time card recorders use cards of paper or the like material that may carry employee identifying information and are required to carry printed information relating to the several entry and exit transactions that the card is used to perform in a form that is legible to the employee. Then there are badge-based recorders in which magnetic or punched hole badges bearing identity information are inserted into the recorder at each entry or exit transaction but no employee legible characters are printed thereon, all pertinent information being held in the internal memory of the recorder. But it is impractical to use badges for all groups of employees because of the desire of many employees to have a permanent written record such as a time card.